STARKVILLE – In the wake of the tragic South Carolina mass shooting in a house of worship by a young white supremacist, public debate over the official symbolism of the Confederate battle flag in general and the specific symbolism of its incorporation into the Mississippi state flag quickly escalated.

Republican Mississippi House Speaker Philip Gunn of Clinton was the first Mississippi official to address the issue, when he said on Monday: “We must always remember our past, but that does not mean we must let it define us. As a Christian, I believe our state’s flag has become a point of offense that needs to be removed. We need to begin having conversations about changing Mississippi’s flag.”

In response, Gov. Phil Bryant said: “A vast majority of Mississippians voted to keep the state’s flag, and I don’t believe the Mississippi Legislature will act to supersede the will of the people on this issue.”

It’s clear that the national debate renewed in South Carolina this month is one that dominated Mississippi political debate some 14 years ago.

Mississippi’s current state flag was adopted in 1894, some 30 years after slavery was abolished. In 2000, the Mississippi Supreme Court, ruling in a lawsuit filed by the NAACP, found that the state technically had no official flag. A provision for establishing the flag, the court ruled, was not carried over when the state revised its laws several years after the flag was adopted.
Former Democratic Gov. Ronnie Musgrove led the controversial 2001 statewide referendum that gave Mississippi voters an opportunity to change the state flag’s 1894 design to a new one which deleted the Confederate battle flag from the canton corner. Mississippi voters rejected the proposition of changing the state flag at the ballot box on April 17, 2001 by a 2-1 margin – 494,323 votes (64.31 percent) to 273,359 votes (35.61 percent).

Musgrove appointed a 17- member commission to hold sometimes contentious public hearings on the flag and recommend a new design. The Mississippi Legislature voted to hold a state referendum on the proposed new flag and let the voters decide.

In that referendum, state voters were offered a choice of keeping the current 1894 state flag or changing to a new one with a blue canton corner with 20 white stars arranged in a circular pattern – denoting Mississippi’s status as the nation’s 20th state. The rest of the proposed new flag was identical to the old one.

That 2001 vote – and the majority of the public discourse in the campaign to change the state flag that preceded it – was argued not over the state’s documented history of racial strife but over the future of the state’s economic development efforts and business climate. The Mississippi vote was taken as South Carolina, Georgia and other states took direct legislative steps to reduce the official presence of Confederate symbolism in their states after protests and boycotts.

The bedrock state business group called the Mississippi Economic Council – known widely as the “state chamber of commerce” – was heavily invested in the 2001 state flag vote. After the effort failed, MEC president Blake Wilson told The New York Times: “It wasn’t a real surprising vote. This is a long-term issue, and the people of Mississippi just need more time to get there.”
Clearly, Wilson’s 2001 statement has proven prophetic. But it also begs the question some 14 years later of whether Mississippi has “gotten there” on changing the state flag.

A fundamental political lesson looms from the 2001 voter referendum – both black and white voters were fairly apathetic about engaging on the issue.

Black Mississippi voters were conspicuously absent and apathetic on the flag issue in 2001. Need evidence? Look at the Mississippi Delta region – the heart of this state’s black voter population. In those counties, the 1894 flag won a 60 percent margin of approval. Records in the secretary of state’s office show that voter participation in the 2001 flag referendum in black majority counties was significantly down from prior elections.

That fact suggests two broad conclusions: Black voters didn’t find the flag issue as compelling as predicted and there was an undeniable failure of pro-flag change forces to get voters of all races to the ballot box.

But there’s a simpler and harder-edged analysis of the referendum available. In the 2001 flag vote, predominantly white and Republican DeSoto County voted 6-1 for the old flag. Predominantly black and Democratic Hinds County voted 2-1 for the new flag.

As citizens of this state, perhaps the most honest political question is this: What has really changed since Mississippi’s rather underwhelming 2001 state flag vote?

Sid Salter is a syndicated columnist. Contact him at sidsalter@sidsalter.com